Had It Been Fine Weather, Or In Port, I Should
Have Gone Below And Lain By Until My Face Got
Well; but in such
weather as this, and short-handed as we were, it was not for me
to desert
My post; so I kept on deck, and stood my watch and did
my duty as well as I could.
Saturday, July 2nd. This day the sun rose fair, but it ran too
low in the heavens to give any heat, or thaw out our sails and
rigging; yet the sight of it was pleasant; and we had a steady
"reef topsail breeze" from the westward. The atmosphere, which had
previously been clear and cold, for the last few hours grew damp,
and had a disagreeable, wet chilliness in it; and the man who came
from the wheel said he heard the captain tell "the passenger" that
the thermometer had fallen several degrees since morning, which he
could not account for in any other way than by supposing that there
must be ice near us; though such a thing had never been heard of
in this latitude, at this season of the year. At twelve o'clock
we went below, and had just got through dinner, when the cook put
his head down the scuttle and told us to come on deck and see the
finest sight that we had ever seen. "Where away, cook?" asked
the first man who was up. "On the larboard bow." And there lay,
floating in the ocean, several miles off, an immense, irregular mass,
its top and points covered with snow, and its center of a deep indigo
color.
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